


Comrade

by santanico



Category: Marvel (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-08 23:56:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/santanico/pseuds/santanico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both remember - how could they not? - but that doesn't make it any easier for Natasha to talk about it. She'd rather erase it, but his memory (and in fact, his standing in front of her) makes that impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comrade

“You’ve killed a lot of people.”

“So have you.”

Natasha looks at him sharply.

“Natalia.”

James stares at her, long and hard.

 _Winter Soldier_.

She breaks eye contact and he sort of chuckles, standing up and walking to the window. “I do remember. I remember what it was like. How I couldn’t be handled. Not even by myself.” He twitches and turns his head to look down at her, sitting cross-legged at the wicker chair in the cheap motel room. “Not even by you.”

Natasha swallows. Her memories are blurry; she prefers not to dig them up. She’s older than history now, colder than ice. She doesn’t think of him as a soldier anymore though – to her he is Bucky, former comrade and friend of Steve Rogers.

Her hands smell too much like soap, too sterile for a room with so much grit and focus in the air. She watches him quietly, the slight curve of his back, the messy curl of his hair, the uneven structure of his face. He is like a fallen warrior instead, no longer powerful and no longer in possession. It’s as if he’s been freed, but freedom has only caused him to crumble. She could touch him but he would turn to dust in her palm.

“You unraveled. It’s natural.” She tries to sound professional and stern, tries to act like what they’re talking about is normal, tries to act like years ago she couldn’t just feel him and taste him and radiate with him. “You’re human.”

A misstep. A miscalculation. He turns sharply and stares at her again, wide-eyed. “Human,” he says slowly, and then he walks to her, hovers over her with more power than she previously imagined he had.

He bends down, and his eyes soften so suddenly. He touches her face and brushes her hair away, stroking his thumb along her jaw and then her cheekbones. When he kisses her there isn’t a spark, isn’t any magic or electrical current – it’s just two mouths pressed together in a dry, tasteless touch. But it feels the same, familiar although vacant; he’s trying. Maybe he’s even trying for her.

“Natalia Romanova.” He rolls his tongue with the words, presses their foreheads together. “You were my closest friend.”

She never thought of them as friends. Thought of them as two spies, situated for war. They just happened to slide together. But maybe after all this time she as wrong. She lifts a hand and rests it on his good arm. “James,” she murmurs, and she isn’t sure how the name feels on her tongue. She isn’t sure how her own name feels, coming from his. No one’s called her that in so long. It’s been so many years.

How can she feel at peace with herself? Not like this. It can never work like this.

“Hush,” he whispers, and his breath ghosts over her cheek and to her ear, his lips resting carefully. His hands trail down her throat and then his mouth finds her collarbone, and everything moves at a rushed pace.

She wants to be set free, too.

She lets him give her the key.


End file.
